Key Components of an Effective Strategic Plan

One of the most impactful ways to ensure your practice is focused and proactive is to conduct regular strategic planning activities. This process can help you define the direction of your practice, establish realistic goals, and drive culture. It may be time to evaluate, or re-evaluate, the following:

Strong Leadership and a Commitment to a Focused, Organized Approach. As with most things in business, an effective strategic planning process starts with leadership. Leadership may include owners, practice administrators, and other advisors in the practice. Your leadership will dictate how decisions, processes, and plans are implemented, how excited and engaged your team is, and ultimately, the impact the plan will have. Practice owners and administrators should champion your practice’s strategic plan and actively participate in the process.

Team Involvement/Engagement. It’s a best practice to involve and engage your staff in developing the strategic plan and ensure they’re part of the ongoing evaluation process. Collaborating with staff while developing your strategic plan can foster ownership and teamwork. Staff can also provide valuable insight into opportunities for an operational overhaul you may not be aware of.

Mission Statement. Your mission statement is a representation of your practice’s purpose and organizational goals. It’s meant to serve as a guide for all leadership and staff so that they can focus and align activities, attitude, decisions, and goals with the practice’s culture. Your mission statement should clarify how your patients will benefit, ie, how you approach patient care. It should also be founded upon and aligned with the practice’s core values.

Vision. This is the desired future state or long-term aspiration your practice has. The vision is typically written in a manner that is unobtainable, but something you always strive for. For example, “We strive to exceed every patient’s expectation.” While meaningful and visionary, the full achievement of this vision may be (partially) subjective. Nonetheless, the lofty goal is worth pursuing as it lays a proper foundation for best practices.

Core Values. What does your practice stand for? What is the culture youwant to foster? Your practice’s core values should be a direct representation of your practice, how it conducts itself, and even the standard(s) owners and employees hold themselves to. These core values can and should be emphasized during onboarding and celebrated on an ongoing basis.

Your core values should have a meaning that can be explained. For example, if you choose “Innovative” as a core value, it could be representative of the practice actively embracing opportunities to implement new technologies and/or processes to improve efficiency.

To further encourage the adoption of, and adherence to, your core values, you should find ways to reinforce and celebrate them. Put them on mouse pads, tablet covers, wall decor, and the like and find opportunities to highlight ways individuals and teams align with them. You could even create a monthly award that celebrates someone in the practice exercising a core value.

Conduct Comprehensive Internal/External Analysis. It’s best to gather as much relevant information as possible in order to create a strong strategic plan. Conducting exercises like a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis, market research, and/or financial assessments will provide valuable information. These analyses can guide your discussion towards opportunities inside and outside of your practice.

For example, if you notice your market is adopting a new technology, you can evaluate and discuss the impact of implementing the same technology in your practice. This evaluation may include how it effects patient volume, provider capacity, financial considerations, and/or operational influence.

Create Clear Goals. Once your analysis is complete, you should develop one to four clear goals, sometimes referred to as Key Strategic Imperatives (KSIs). These goals should be developed in a way that utilizes a strength, shores up a weakness, and leverages an opportunity while mitigating a threat. To organize your goals, consider using the SMART goal method. Each goal should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Let’s use our equipment example from above. If you’ve determined there’s an opportunity to add a service to your practice through the purchase of this new equipment, your KSI may be something like, “Expand service offering to include new treatment.” Be careful not to get too detailed here. That’s what an action plan is for.

Action Items: Once you’ve identified your KSIs, you’ll need to create a plan to achieve your goal. This could be detailed and/or lengthy, depending on the initiative. A good action plan will include the action, who’s responsible (need an owner for each action item!), and a date by which you hope to have it achieved.

If offering a new treatment, your action items might look something like the following:

Strategic Plan Rollout. Once you’ve organized your plan and action items, you’ll need to communicate this information to your team. It’ll be important to inspire your team and encourage their participation and ownership in the plan. You might consider hosting a lunch or dinner as part of the roll out. Introduce the practice’s mission, vision, and core values, share and/or discuss how you can keep the core values alive, educate them as to your process to identifying KSIs, and review the action plan (as appropriate).

Create a culture of accountability to ensure responsibilities in the action plan are clear and completed. It may be helpful to schedule check-in meetings to report on and celebrate progress towards the goals.

Regular Review and Adaptability. After organizing your plan and rolling it out to your team, it’s important to ensure the plan is reviewed regularly. When evaluating your progress, be flexible and adaptable, as your action items may change, individuals responsible may leave or be focused elsewhere, or a KSI may no longer be a priority.

Other Considerations. While not vital, it might be helpful to have a third party facilitate your planning session(s). Having the perspective of someone outside of the practice may prove valuable when evaluating your practice’s strengths, weaknesses, etc. It may also assist you in managing the administrative burden during the analysis phase, SWOT planning, action plan development, and rollout. They may also be able to tackle some action items and help hold you and the practice accountable in conducting regular reviews.

Strategic planning is an interactive and creative process. By following the steps outlined above, your practice may increase the likelihood of developing, implementing, and continuing the planning process to align your practice’s mission, vision, and values with successful outcomes.